by Marge Piercy
Santarpio’s was a ramshackle brown shingled building right by the expressway, where it emerged from the tunnel and toll booths. A bar ran along the right side and tables stood along the left. It was smoky. Tom’s nose began immediately to run. They took the table nearest the door, where he could hope for occasional relief. Pizza and red wine, it felt familiar here, almost cozy. Dominic Fabrizzi had been as dark and as strongly built as Tom, although not as filled out. That had been their senior year. She had imagined herself in love, yet she had been afraid of him, that he might force her. Her physical attraction to him had scared her, so that she had always been cold with him, sure if she relaxed her guard, she would be lost. “Why not tell me right off what you want? What am I being softened up for?”
“You say you need to understand your husband. We have to understand him too, among others, because he’s a major landlord in our neighborhood. There’s a lot going on we can’t figure out yet.”
“He’s trying to force me to sell my house. I might do it eventually, but my daughter’s still coming home vacations, summers, some weekends—”
“How many children do you have?”
She told him about Tracy and Robin, even volunteering the brief facts about Freddy, which she seldom did. She was surprised, but put her frankness down to being so near base. Politely she asked him in return. He had two daughters, several years younger than hers. Then she dragged the conversation back. “I love my house—irrationally, powerfully. It’s all I have left besides Tracy. Robin is siding with her father and his girlfriend.”
“Why don’t you get somebody to share the house?”
“I already put ads in several papers.”
“You did?” He looked up from his plate, his eyes losing their sleepy look.
“You like to peg people neatly, don’t you?”
He gave her a brief flash of grin. “You’ve been doing that to yourself for years, haven’t you? Toning yourself down. Filing the rough edges. Planing everything smooth.”
“All married people do. Especially wives and mothers.”
“Wait till you meet Sandra María. She’s got more elbows than Kali.”
“I want to know if what he says about our financial situation is true. He wants to force me to sell the house. We’d split the money and he’d pay for Tracy’s education. That’s it. I think we must have mutual investments, savings, something.”
From his wallet he extracted a dog-eared card. “See her.”
“Another divorce lawyer?”
“She did mine. The kids were our bone of contention. She does some criminal law, discrimination cases, whatever appeals to her. She won’t make you feel like an idiot.”
“A very young woman?” She imagined Robin across a desk.
“My age. She started law school when she was twenty-eight. I’ve known her from way back when.” He smiled nostalgically. “One time Dorothy and I were on an underground paper together, The Old Mole. A million years ago in another country. She has red hair too.”
“My hair isn’t red.”
“It’s reddish. Like mahogany or cherry, with red deep inside it.”
“Maybe I’ll try her. I called yesterday and cancelled my appointment with the lawyer I saw. I couldn’t get that questionnaire filled out and I couldn’t face him with it botched.”
“Try her. She has good women’s politics—”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Aw, come on, it means she understands what you’re up against. Besides, any lawyer who does some criminal cases for ordinary people has to exercise patience. She has kids come in, she asks them, ‘Why did you try to hold up the dry cleaners?’ and they say, ‘I dunno, I just thought of it. It was like that guy on Magnum.’ If you do want to unravel Walker’s affairs, we can help each other.”
“Oh?” She sat back, regarding him from under her lashes. “Sure. The real purpose of your group is to give legal aid to the dumped wives of landlords.”
“Shu-wah. You give it two syllables. Can’t get the neighborhood out of the kid. Did Walker think that was cute?”
“I’m getting back all my old bad habits.”
“You need to investigate Walker. We need to investigate Walker.” He was talking fast now in his deep voice, leaning forward across the table, heat and energy coming off him like light. “You have some resources we don’t, access to his papers, income tax returns. We have resources you don’t.…”
Deliberately she sipped her wine, fighting being overwhelmed. “Look, Tom, it just doesn’t make sense. You want to know about business. Frankly, if I could have just one question answered, I’d know who this Gail Wisby is and what’s so special about her she could take my husband.”
“Maybe she’s just a pretext. An affair can help when you want to leave anyhow. Then you got somebody else saying, Do it.”
“Can you really imagine I’m going to join your group and picket my husband? I can’t just turn on him and go over to the other side.”
He smiled sardonically. “Is he on your side?”
She shook her head no.
“But probably you just hope he’ll come back real soon.”
She shook her head, remaining silent an embarrassingly long time until she could establish control over herself. She must not cry in front of him.
“Go on, you can’t even talk about him without breaking up.”
“It hurts, damn it. I’m angry. I’m humiliated.… But the man I married isn’t the man I’m married to. He won’t come back. The man I want doesn’t exist any longer.”
“The question is, do you want to sit around and weep over it, or do you really want information you can act on?”
“It dragged on so long, his leaving. For months I thought I was crazy, was imagining everything. It tore me up. I have a life to make now, my own life. I know it won’t include him.”
“So give up. Let him take everything and drop what crumbs he wants.”
“I can’t afford to. I’m trying to survive. I’m telling you, for my own good I have to understand. But what I need to know, it’s not buildings and real estate. It’s the man.”
“Daria, do you think somebody is more than the sum of their acts good and bad? You know somebody’s real ideas by what they do and who they do it to.”
“You just want to use me and my divorce and my troubles.”
“So use us back, Daria. We have some knowledge and research techniques to get more. If you need help, and I think you do, make an alliance with us.” He took her hand in both of his. “We’re your natural allies, can’t you see?”
His hands were large and hot, startling. She sat stunned and then with her free hand she salted his with the big shaker. “With a little of that! Don’t try to be seductive with me. I’m impervious.”
“Seductive!” He yanked his hands away. “I was being sympathetic.”
She felt herself blushing. “You were just trying one more argument.”
He scowled, his hands folded ostentatiously against his chest. “You don’t know who’s on your side and who’s out to get you, do you?”
She almost apologized. Then she thought, I don’t have to! She imagined Fay barrelling along, dressing as she pleased and eating as she pleased and sounding off as she pleased. She did not think Fay was always scurrying around apologizing. For years she had been saying incessantly to Ross that she was sorry: when the sauce wasn’t perfect, when supper was ten minutes late, when Torte peed on the new carpeting, when Robin left her ten speed in the drive and the oil truck backed over it, when Tracy was caught making love with Nick. Tom Silver was simply interested in trying to use her, and she owed him no apology. He thought her a simple middle-aged woman who would be a pushover for a little manly charm.
Smiling inwardly, she sipped her wine. She had handled that well, putting him smartly in his place. “I’m simply not convinced we do have the same interests. Fay and I can work together on conditions in her building, but otherwise, really, we have nothing to offer each othe
r.” She wished she could stop and see Gussie, but she didn’t want to drag Tom along. “We don’t want or need the same kind of information. I own Fay’s building, it seems. But my responsibility stops there.”
15
“We can’t make people not fall in love with other people, but we’ll see he does right by you,” Cesaro intoned.
She could imagine him tapping out his pipe as he spoke, his forehead screwing into that judicious frown. However, Cesaro not only returned her calls but called on his own to check her situation; whereas Tony had returned none of her calls. “You’ve met her, haven’t you?”
“Not with him. I have no intention of having them over before arrangements are made to your satisfaction.”
“My satisfaction?” She felt like thumping the receiver on the desk.
“Justly, I mean. I must confess I had somehow assumed it was the younger sister Flip. Trish knows her from horse shows. I supposed it was Flip, because she’s stunning, the racy type.”
“And you don’t think Gail is?”
“Oh, come on.” Cesaro cleared his throat. “The middle sister. The oldest is Rowena Robson, the designer. Of course, both the other sisters are married and have a couple of offspring apiece.”
“And Gail isn’t married?”
“No, no. Daria, don’t dwell on it. You can delay their marrying, but you can’t prevent it. Remember how I helped you when you found your house was held in tenant in the entirety?”
“I appreciated that, Cesaro. Without your pressure he’d never have changed it, and I’d be sunk now.”
“You see the lawyer whose name I am about to give you. He’ll do the best for you that can be done.” He sounded as if he were suggesting a second opinion on a hopeless cancer. Daria took down the name obediently. She was learning that everyone was going to press upon her the name of some lawyer.
She was satisfied with Dorothy Keough. Tom had picked well for Daria, whether by chance or insight or simply the association of Dorothy too having grown up in East Boston, although seven years later than Daria. “We grow them tough,” Dorothy said. “If planes flying through your bedroom don’t wear you down, and you can breathe pure carbon monoxide in the Callahan Tunnel for hours each day, then you can take anything else the system may throw at you.” Dorothy told her she had three options. “You can accept your husband’s figures as to what you’re both worth. You can make up your own and try to bluff. Not recommended. Or you can put in some labor yourself. It’s a question, really, of how much trouble you’re willing to take. It’ll cost you too much if I do it. Now I can make some phone calls for you. Right off I’ll call this accountant who’s sitting on the tax returns and have copies of the last seven years sent over. That’ll be a start.”
Dorothy had lighter brown hair than Daria with more carrot in it, a scattering of freckles makeup could not hide and light sandy eyes. She was short, plump and low-voiced, with ears double-pierced in which she wore tiny diamond studs.
“I’m easy with her,” Daria explained to Tracy on the phone. The telephone had always been Daria’s enemy, cutting into her work time, disrupting her tight scheduling of blocks of time for work, preparation for Ross’s social evenings, the daily tasks of running a complicated household. Now the telephone offered companionship; it cuddled against her shoulder bringing instant intimacy, the buzz of friendship, news, comfort. She talked with Gretta every other night and could scarcely recall how she used to wince when the phone rang and Gretta was on the line. She often broke at one on weekdays when Alice was in her office in the botany department at MIT eating a brown bag lunch. Although Daria had been friendly with Alice for seven years, previously they had seldom spoken unless she had a question for Alice about plants.
Now she talked to Gussie three times a week. Many people like somebody in worse trouble than they are, she learned, especially when the trouble is new. Everybody told her their infidelity stories, their divorce tales. If she was rarely invited out socially, then at least she was sought out by other women to swap stories of broken marriages. Alice told her about her first husband. Alice also referred her to an accountant.
She felt incredibly adult, having her own accountant. For all the years she had worked, never had the money been real to her. She liked making money. She met her deadlines sedulously and tried to do a good job with demonstrations, classes, contests. But the money she earned had melted away into their life, so that it was seldom she could point to something and say, I bought that, I invested in that.
Her accountant—what a self-important ring that possessive had—was a tall lucid man with pale hair and pale grey eyes a few years younger than Daria, about the same age as Dorothy. He made bad jokes and had his office decorated with Kliban cats, but he gently explained and explained to her. On the phone to Ross’s accountant, he was hectoring. His cold authoritative demands pleased her. Accountant to accountant, lawyer to lawyer, the joust got under way. The phone gave her a web of arteries that pumped in the blood of connection. The only time it betrayed her was when she answered it, hoping for a shot of warmth, and got Ross instead.
“Daria, old bean, how are you doing?” He used that caramel voice she used to hear through the door when he was on the phone to Gail.
“What do you want, Ross?”
“Just to know how you are. You know I still care about you, sweetie, still have your interests close to my heart.”
How could he say that? She was so angry she could not think in words but in a fiery red light that would not translate into words. Besides Dorothy had told her to avoid giving Ross any information about her own plans.
“Daria? Are you still there?”
“Here is where I am, yes.” She tried to invest her tone with some of the bitter irony she felt.
“Thought I’d come by and get a few papers I need, how about it? Have a drink, talk things over.”
“If there’s something you need, how about Thursday at five?”
“What is this five o’clock bit? That’s very inconvenient.” His voice rose in pitch and decibels.
“It’s very convenient for me. Doesn’t interfere with my evening.”
In truth she was putting him off till Thursday because she had begun going through the papers in his study on her lawyer’s advice, looking for clues to their financial situation. Her real fantasy was finding a big manila envelope labelled Gail Wisby that would contain everything she wanted to know about the woman who had taken Ross from her; emotional history, vital statistics, sexual habits, secret lore. She figured ruefully that she spent at least an hour daily inventing Gail Wisby—invention out of despair because she had so little to build on. One small item of interest she had learned from photocopied tax returns—learned when the accountant pointed it out to her—was that Ross had opened an account the year before in a bank near his office, an account he had never mentioned to her, presumably before he had ever met Gail.
This time she made a list of those trusts that seemed to siphon off a large part of their income. She did not know how to pursue further exactly what they were, but she was a firm believer in libraries and was convinced all information was somewhere accessible. Ross had also paid over eight thousand dollars directly to Tony over the past three months. There were three IOUs signed by Ross to Tony, dated the last year, marked paid.
The next night the phone rang at eleven, when she was in bed reading. A little warily she picked it up. It was her brother Joe. “Yeah, but it’s not late to me,” he said. “We don’t close till now and besides the rates go down. How come we had to find out the news from Cesaro?”
“I didn’t see any reason to worry Pops about it. After all, nothing’s settled yet.”
“Cesaro seemed to think Ross was for sure divorcing you. Is he full of hot air as usual?”
“Ross left me the day after Christmas.” She got so weary of saying that. “He has a girlfriend. I’m sure Cesaro told you all that.”
“I figure you’re going to sell the house, right? So you ought to
come down here. You can keep house for Pops.”
She was so astonished she could not speak for a moment. “Come down there? I couldn’t possibly.”
“What it is, you have a boyfriend too? I don’t believe it.”
“Of course not. But I have contracts, commitments, my book to get in on schedule—”
“You come on down and live with Pops. Plenty of room in the garden apartment. Pops likes the idea, we had a family council tonight and we worked it out.”
“Is there room for my secretary too? Joe, I work. Here. Tracy’s in college here—”
“She can transfer.”
“She doesn’t want to transfer and I have no intention of leaving my home.” When the conversation was finally over, when she ended it out of fatigue, she realized how completely invisible she was to her father and her oldest brother. After that phone call, she almost believed she was mistaken about her profession: that she really had none, that her writing, her lecturing, her cooking-school work were all childish pretense, on a level with decoupage and collecting salt and pepper shakers, as Nina’s friend Liz used to do. They saw her as a middle-aged child. My lawyer, my accountant, my agent, she said over to herself, my secretary, my editor. What I do is real, it is!
When Ross arrived Thursday, she felt jittery, afraid he would notice something amiss in his study, but he seemed on edge himself. “Did any mail come here for me?”
“I assume you’re having it forwarded. There’s a pile of junk mail and some catalogues on the table in the hall.”
He riffled through the pile. “You can throw all that out.… Have you had any more threats from that tenant group? Any harassment?”
“They haven’t bothered me. Why?”
“Just wondered. We have to protect you by moving those buildings out of your name.” He started to open his briefcase.
“I’m afraid my lawyer won’t allow me to sign anything prior to the divorce agreement.”
“These buildings have nothing whatsoever to do with divorce. They were merely placed under your name for convenience.”